Positioning patients with reduced mobility on beds in health care centers is of great importance to prevent impairing health and to improve comfort during treatment.
The lack of autonomy to perform basic movements and posture changes may cause distress and discomfort in a patient which could negatively influence his/her health.
A wide variety of beds provided with a mechanism which can be electrically actuated allowing performing certain movements in an automated manner, such as raising-lowering or inclining a horizontal section of the bed itself, being actuated by means of a push button or remote control system which can be actuated by the user him/herself or by healthcare personnel in the case of a patient with reduced mobility, is known today.
However, despite the advantages of such electric beds, nurses must manually change the position of the patient every 2 or 4 hours according to the situation of the patient, for example, for drug administration, cleaning, etc. Constant and prolonged manual handling of patients by healthcare personnel can cause back pains in the latter that may result in a sick leave with the subsequent economic losses. Furthermore, another equally significant drawback is that in all the known actuation mechanisms there is always a need for actuation by the patient him/herself or healthcare personnel using push buttons, such that there is a need to find a system or device providing the patient with a higher degree of autonomy when moving the bed.